A Pragmatics-Based Approach to Ellipsis Resolution

Intersentential elliptical utterances occur frequently during information-seeking dialogs in task domains. This paper presents a pragmatics-based framework for interpreting such utterances. Discourse expectations and focusing heuristics are used to facilitate recognition of an information-seeker's intent in uttering an elliptical fragment. The ellipsis is comprehended by identifying both the aspect of the information-seeker's task-related plan highlighted by the fragment and the conversational discourse goal fulfilled by the utterance. The contribution of this approach is its consideration of pragmatic information, including discourse content and conversational goals, rather than just the precise representation of the preceding utterance.